Harming Our Common Future: America's Segregated Schools 65 Years After Brown

Harming our Common Future:
America's Segregated Schools 65 Years after Brown
Erica Frankenberg
Jongyeon Ee
Jennifer B. Ayscue
Gary Orfield
May 10, 2019

Acknowledgements
We are very grateful for the support and assistance of Laurie Russman and Carolyn Peelle in the
preparation of this report, which was very complex. This endeavor involved collaboration of
scholars from four universities,* was carried out with no grant, and required scores of
communications via email and phone, from different parts of the country, at all hours of the day
and night. We appreciate the efforts of each of the authors, and of those who work with them on
their campuses and support them at home. Each of the authors made substantial contributions
and should be equally credited for the final report.
It has been a great pleasure to work with a rising group of scholars who are so deeply concerned
about overcoming the divisions in our society, and working towards making the dream of the
Brown decision and our great civil rights laws a reality in a difficult time. Our country has
passively accepted the return and deepening of segregation in unequal schools. It is time for
educators of the U.S. to take leadership in assuring that we do not confine our students of color,
nor critically limit the education of white students in schools that are obviously inadequate for
the preparation of a society in which we all must live and work and govern together.
Gary Orfield
University of California, Los Angeles
*The authors (listed in alphabetical order by last name) and their affiliations are: Jennifer B.
Ayscue, North Carolina State University; Jongyeon Ee, Loyola Marymount University; Erica
Frankenberg, Pennsylvania State University, and Gary Orfield, UCLA Civil Rights Project
www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu 1
Harming Our Common Future: America’s Segregated Schools 65 Years after Brown, May 10, 2019
Table of Contents
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... 3
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................. 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ....................................................................................................... 4
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................... 6
OVERVIEW............................................................................................................................... 6
A CHANGING ENROLLMENT—THE MULTIRACIAL FUTURE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS ...................... 10
GROWING DIVISION AFFECTING SCHOOLS .............................................................................. 12
CURRENT BARRIERS TO FURTHER INTEGRATION ..................................................................... 13
CHANGES IN PUBLIC SCHOOL ENROLLMENT ........................................................... 15
PUBLIC SCHOOL ENROLLMENT BY REGION & STATE ............................................................... 17
PUBLIC SCHOOL ENROLLMENT BY TYPES OF AREAS ............................................................... 20
TRENDS IN SEGREGATION ............................................................................................... 21
DOUBLE SEGREGATION .......................................................................................................... 23
BLACK STUDENT SEGREGATION ............................................................................................. 25
LATINO STUDENT SEGREGATION ............................................................................................ 28
WHITE STUDENT SEGREGATION ............................................................................................. 31
SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................. 33
RECOMMENDATIONS ........................................................................................................ 35
APPENDIX: COMPARATIVE TABLES FROM BROWN AT 60 ....................................... 39
TECHNICAL NOTES ............................................................................................................ 43
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Public School Enrollment by Race (in Millions): 1968 to 2016-17 .............................. 16
Table 2: Percentage of Public-School Enrollment, by Race and Region: 2006-07 and 2016-17 . 18
Table 3: Total Enrollment and Racial Composition, by State: 2016-17 ...................................... 19
Table 4: Racial Composition of Public School Enrollment (%), by Types of Areas: 2006-07 &
2016-17 .................................................................................................................................... 20
Table 5: Percentage of Black Students in 90-100% Non-White Schools, by Region:1968-2016 26
Table 6: Lowest Black Student Exposure to White Students by State: 2016-17 ......................... 27
Table 7: Highest Percentages of Black Students in 90-100% Non-white Schools by State: 2016-
17 ............................................................................................................................................. 28
Table 8: Percentage of Latino Students in 90-100% Non-White Schools, by Region:1968-2016 29
Table 9: Lowest Latino Student Exposure to White Students by State, 2016-17 ........................ 30
Table 10: Highest Percentages of Latino Students in 90-100% Non-white Schools by State,
2016-17 .................................................................................................................................... 30
Table 11: Exposure to White Students by the Typical Race of Each Student & Types of Areas:
2016-17 .................................................................................................................................... 33
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Percentage of Student Population in Public Schools, by Race, 1970 to 2016-17 ......... 16
Figure 2: Racial Composition of Public School Enrollment (%), by Types of Areas, 2016-17 ... 21
Figure 3: Percentage of Intensely Segregated Schools, 1988-2016 ............................................ 22
Figure 4: Racial Composition of Schools Attended by the Typical Student of Each Race: 2016-
2017.......................................................................................................................................... 23
Figure 5: Racial Composition of Schools Attended by the Typical White Student, 2006, 2011,
2016.......................................................................................................................................... 32
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The publication of this report marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the
landmark U.S. Supreme Court case declaring racial segregation in public schools
unconstitutional. In the immediate years after the Brown ruling, the effort to integrate schools
faced many difficult challenges and progress was limited. But the passage of the l964 Civil
Rights Act as well as a series of Supreme Court decisions in the l960s and early 1970s produced
momentum towards increased desegregation for black students that lasted until the late l980s, as
districts across much of the country worked to achieve the promise of Brown--integrated schools
for all children.
As we mark the 65th anniversary of Brown, there have been many changes since the ruling, but
intense levels of segregation—which had decreased markedly after 1954 for black students—are
on the rise once again. In the 1990s, a series of Supreme Court decisions led to the end of
hundreds of desegregation orders and plans across the nation. This report shows that the growth
of racial and economic segregation that began then has now continued unchecked for nearly
three decades, placing the promise of Brown at grave risk.
These trends matter for students, and for communities whose futures are determined by how the
public schools prepare their students for a diverse future. Research shows that segregation has
strong, negative relationships with the achievement, college success, long-term employment and
income of students of color. At a time of dramatic demographic transformation, the implications
of these trends and research are important for us to address.
White students are now a minority across the country’s public school enrollment, and they have
been for a while, particularly in the public schools of the nation’s two largest regions, the West
and the South. Since 1968 the nation’s enrollment of white students has declined by 11 million
students while the enrollment of Latinos has increased by 11 million. There are now nearly three
million Asian students and two million students who identify as multiracial. These changes are a
direct reflection of lower birth rates among white households and population growth due to
immigration. Latino students were 5% of U.S. enrollment in 1970 and 26% by 2016. At this
stage, the vast majority of Latino students are U.S. citizens, but the Supreme Court’s Plyler
decision requires that public schools enroll all students regardless of citizenship status.
White and Latino students are the most segregated groups. White students, on average, attend a
school in which 69% of the students are white, while Latino students attend a school in which
55% of the students are Latino. Segregation for black students is rising in all parts of the U.S.
Black students, who account for 15% of enrollment, as they did in 1970, are in schools that
average 47% black students. Asian students, on average, attend schools with 24% fellow Asians.
Black students attend schools with a combined black and Latino enrollment averaging 67%, and
Latino students attend schools with a combined black and Latino enrollment averaging
66%. White and Asian students have much lower exposure to combined black and Latino
students, at 22% and 34%, respectively.
Suburban schools in our nation’s largest metropolitan areas had only 47% white students in
2016, a ten-percentage point decline in a decade. About a seventh of these suburban students
were black, and more than a fourth (27%) were Latino. There was considerable segregation
within the suburbs, where both African American and Latino students typically attended schools
that were about three-fourths nonwhite. White students in these same large suburbs attended
schools where two-thirds of the enrollment was white students, on average. Our book,
Resegregation of Suburban Schools, showed that few of the racially changing suburbs we studied
had any desegregation plans. Doing nothing means accepting resegregation.
Even rural schools that were 70% white had stark differences in segregation. The typical white
student went to a rural school in which 80% of students were white, while the typical black or
Latino student went to a rural school with 57% nonwhite enrollment.
New York remains the most segregated state for African American students with 65% of African
American students in intensely segregated minority schools. California is the most segregated for
Latinos, where 58% attend intensely segregated schools, and the typical Latino student is in a
school with only 15% white classmates. These numbers, especially in California, are related in
part to sweeping changes in the total population structure as well as the termination of
desegregation efforts, and reflect the changing realities of classroom composition.
The federal government has no programs devoted to fostering voluntary integration of the
schools, aside from the small Magnet School Assistance Program. It has been decades since
federal agencies funded significant research about effective strategies for school integration.
Encouragingly, there are efforts for integration under state law and policies now in process in
several states. Additionally, court-ordered and Office for Civil Rights-negotiated desegregation
plans remain in a few hundred smaller districts, and there are dozens of local districts and
regional desegregation efforts as well. We end with recommendations that research has shown
can help achieve the promise of Brown, and that sharply reduce the number of segregated
schools the Court described as “inherently unequal.”
INTRODUCTION
Overview
We are a country that has always been racially diverse with a large majority of white residents
for many generations. That majority is rapidly coming to an end and already is over among the
school age population. All the trends show that this change will continue. It is already very far
advanced in our two largest regions, the South and the West, where the country’s growth is
concentrated. When the nation last focused seriously on racial segregation of our schools, we
were a country largely white with about an eighth black students and were at a historic low point
in immigration. As we become a country without a majority population, an absolutely central
question for our future is how well are we managing our diversity? The basic statistics show
profound and enduring gaps in educational and economic success in a country that is also very
deeply polarized in terms of attitudes and political beliefs.
The driving force of our social change since 1970 has been an enormous increase in the Latino
population, and this has become a central issue in our current political polarization. We have few
tools for bringing people together across racial and ethnic lines—basically the laws and court
decisions of the civil rights era—but some of those have been reversed and others are under
attack. Those policies were designed for what was basically a two-race society with a substantial
white middle class majority, and did not take into account what have become very large Latino
populations and rapidly growing Asian numbers. We now have a four-race society and a much
higher share of families who are poor enough to be eligible for free school lunches.
A central belief in our democracy is that educational opportunity is the key to fairness in a
society that does not support broad social policies, except for the elderly. The U.S. Supreme
Court’s Brown decision, the most important decision of the 20th century, held that segregated
education was “inherently unequal” and created irreversible harm to segregated students. The
Court was talking then about schools segregated by law in 17 states, but research shows that the
impact of segregation is similar whether caused by law or by local policies and practices. This
study reports on our progress in creating integrated education 65 years after Brown. Sadly, it
shows that we are not making significant progress, as racial change affects every part of our
society in all of the settings, from our small rural towns to the great metropolises, where the large
majority of our children are growing up.
Integrating the white minority. In the West today there are already more Latino than white
students in the public schools, and in California only about a fourth of all students are white. In
the South, the white minority in the region continues to decline as a share of total enrollment.
There are trends in this direction in many parts of the country. Historically there were few whites
in schools with a substantial nonwhite majority and large numbers attending schools where more
than nine-tenths of the students were white. Today the growing sectors of enrollment are Latino
and Asian and mixed race. In the University of California, the nation’s leading public higher
education system, whites have fallen behind Asians in enrollment in spite of their much higher
numbers. A significantly larger share of whites are now minorities in nonwhite schools, and the
number of schools that are over 90% white has plummeted. These trends are continuing. They
mean that in many places white young people need to learn how to function effectively in
situations where they will be in the minority. Parents say they favor their children learning to
deal with people from other groups, but white parents often seek homes far from nonwhite
communities and schools. There has been very little focus on how the schools can help create
better outcomes amid our historic demographic transformation and policy reversals. There is no
choice not to experience racial change. Even among Latino students, well over nine-tenths were
born in this country, so this is not caused by recent immigration. The white population has had a
low birth rate several decades and is aging. Immigration has been overwhelmingly nonwhite and
the nonwhite populations are younger. Denial is the general practice but it is like trying to stop a
tide. The only real choice is whether to do this positively or continue the long experiences of
failure and resegregation. Although we have good models and research on what works better
both for students of color and white students in strengthening education and preparing young
people to live and work effectively in extremely multiracial communities, it is controversial to
mention the issue and suggest positive solutions. Nevertheless, that is what political and
educational leadership looks like in a changing nation. A very wide gap has opened between
powerful recent research documenting the lifetime costs of segregated schools and communities
and policies that ignore the issue or even make it worse.
Researchers in several disciplines, including massive analysis by economists, are showing us the
cost of double segregation by race and poverty, which is now the typical experience of African
American and Latino students. At the same time, white students who are now part of a shrinking
minority in many parts of the U.S. will be living and working as adults in communities with a
continuously shrinking share of whites. Latinos have already surpassed whites as the largest
group of students in the West. Are the students in these communities being brought together in a
lasting and positive way? Or, are we to have students stratified within diverse schools taught by
teachers who were not diverse and not trained in ways to develop to positive possibilities of
diversity?
Black segregation. The desegregation of black students in seventeen states with segregation
mandated by law was a central objective of the civil rights revolution. After more than a decade
of bitter resistance and very limited change, the passage of the most sweeping civil rights law in
U.S. history, enforcement by the Johnson Administration, and powerful unanimous decisions by
the Supreme Court, there was a huge breakthrough, and the Southern schools became the most
integrated region of the country for several decades. Nineteen years after Brown, in l973, the
Supreme Court opened the door to desegregation lawsuits outside the South for both black and
Latino desegregation but created both far more demanding standards of proof of violations than
in the South and, in l974, protected the suburbs from involvement in desegregation remedies,
although many central cities had already lost the great bulk of the white population. By the l980s
there was a full-scale attack on integration plans by the Reagan and Bush Justice Departments
and a leading opponent, William Rehnquist, became Chief Justice. Since the early l970s there
have been no expansions of federal desegregation law and no real creation of federal programs or
policies to support integration of schools and neighborhoods. Segregation has engulfed central
cities, spread far out into sectors of suburbia, and is now serious in our small metros and even
our small towns. Most court orders in large districts ended in the l990s.
The success for black students growing up in integrated schools was substantial as recounted in
Prof. Rucker Johnson’s 2019 book, Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works,
based on sophisticated long term studies of large numbers of African American students who
were either segregated or desegregated. He found higher achievement, college success at more
selective colleges, higher income, better jobs, less incarceration, and better long-term health for
students in interracial schools.1 Another major study of huge datasets by researchers at Stanford,
Harvard, and the Census Bureau reported especially strong effects for African American boys.2
These findings build on a half-century of research showing the benefits of desegregation.3
During the civil rights era and lasting until the court ordered dissolution of desegregation plans
in the l990s, the public schools of the South were substantially less segregated than the
residential neighborhoods. Today, with large scale school resegregation, the schools are even
more isolated than the neighborhoods. Yet the children need preparation for increasingly
interracial colleges, jobs, and neighborhoods of the future. The schools used to be a valuable
resource for preparing for the great demographic transformation. Now they are becoming
obstacles, raising students in separation and denying the experience needed to acquire the
relationship skills (the “soft skills” employers value most) for our future economy and
communities. The best opportunities are going to the most privileged children who are attending
diverse elite colleges and universities.
The data in this report shows a disconcerting increase of black segregation in all parts of the
country. This is true even though African Americans are a slowly declining share of the total
student population, and many now live in suburban areas. It shows a very substantial loss from
the high point of desegregation in the late l980s. We also see that in the West where blacks are
now only 5% of the total enrollment, most are attending schools that are predominantly Latino.
This pattern is evident in many areas including parts of the South, traditionally the heartland of
the African American community, where there are now larger numbers of Latinos than blacks.
Very little attention has been given to these trends.
Black suburbanization and Latino migration have produced more black contact with Latinos in
very high poverty schools and fewer of the virtually all-black schools of the old communities.
Too often now black children are isolated from white and middle-class students but are a
minority in the school of another minority.
A troubling development has been the enormous growth and intensifying segregation by
ethnicity and poverty of the Latino students, who are now by far the largest nonwhite
community. They are now more segregated in their own group than are blacks; and often,
particularly in the Southwest and the West, African American students are not only isolated from
whites and from the middle class but they are, on average, attending schools where they are a
minority group within a Latino school. Latino students now are typically in schools with
insignificant white and middle-class populations, a particularly dramatic historic change in the
West. Sometimes they are also segregated from students whose home language is English.
1
Johnson, R. (Forthcoming 2019). Children of the dream: Why school integration works. Basic Books & the Russell
Sage Foundation Press.
2
Chetty, R., Hedren, N., Jones, M. R., & Porter, S. R. (March 2018). Race and economic opportunity in the United
States: An intergenerational perspective. National Bureau of Economic Research.
3
Linn, R., & Welner, K. (Eds.). (2007). Race-conscious policies for assigning students to schools: Social science
research and the Supreme Court cases. Washington, DC: National Academy of Education.
The segregation of Latino students is now the most severe of any group and typically involves a
very high concentration of poverty. Although there were important court decisions in states on
the segregation of Latino students even before the Brown decision, and even though there had
been a long history of exclusion and segregation both among and within individual schools, the
Supreme Court did not address the issue until 19 years after the Brown decision in the
1973 Keyes decision involving the Denver public schools. Though the Court held that Latino
students were entitled to desegregation remedies, unlike during the l960s there was no
enforcement of the decision by the federal government. Segregation has continuously intensified
as the Latino numbers soared and there has been very little effort to address it.
Schools of choice have played a greatly increased role in public education. There was a huge
growth of intentionally integrated magnet schools in the l970s. Since 1990 most of the
desegregation requirements in choice plans have been dropped, and there has been a vast
expansion of charter schools, which are schools of choice. Typically they have no integration
policies and are even more segregated than regular public schools, though unlike those districts
and schools, they often are not tied to particular segregated neighborhoods.
The suburbs are experiencing profound changes. At the time of the civil rights movement the
suburbs were white, and significant racial change did not develop until the l970s. The data in this
report shows that the change has been faster and more sweeping than most Americans
understand, and there is now a majority of nonwhites in the suburban rings of our largest metros.
Many of these suburban communities never had a desegregation plan, and many of their
residents came to the suburbs after leaving racially changing city neighborhoods. White suburbs
usually have much smaller school systems and not much diversity among teachers and
administrators, and there has been little training or planning in communities now facing threat of
resegregation. There have been no significant programs or policies to help these communities
deal successfully with diversity either in education or housing policy. As a growing list of
suburban sectors become predominantly nonwhite areas of concentrated poverty, they are facing
challenges city neighborhoods faced a half century ago but with even less help. The suburbs and
gentrifying cities are the current frontiers of racial change and are places where policy could
make a difference.
Students and communities seeking integration. Many educators, students and community
members recognize the cost of segregation and want to do something about it. The emergence of
a student protest movement in New York City, in the state that has the highest level of
segregation for black students and extremely high levels of Latinos, has helped force the issue
onto the city and the school district’s agenda. In three states—Connecticut, New Jersey and
Minnesota—there is litigation supported by civil rights organizations under way on state
policies. In Dallas and San Antonio there are active local policies to create more diverse schools
that have scored some early successes. In our experience a great many educators have long
known that segregated schools are fundamentally unequal.
A Changing Enrollment—The Multiracial Future of Public Schools
In 2019, 65 years after Brown, our nation’s public school enrollment no longer has a majority
racial group. Although white students still comprise the largest racial group in our nation’s
schools (23.9 million white students), after nearly a half-century of decline in the percentage of
the overall enrollment, it is notable that white students no longer account for the majority of
public school students (48.4%) in the United States. This is not because of a significant growth
of the share of private schools but an impact of birth rates and immigration changes. The Latino
share of enrollment has been growing tremendously such that more than half of the students of
color in the United States identify as Latino (13 million students). Black students account for the
third largest racial group (7.5 million) followed by Asian students, multiracial students, and
American Indian students. This is a multiracial reality quite different from those existing at the
time of the Brown decision.
Patterns of declining white enrollment and Latino growth are not new to the West, an area where
white students have not been the majority for a while; in fact, there are more Latino students than
white students in the West. However, the spread of Latino students across the United States is
noteworthy. In the South, the region in which de jure segregation legally separated black and
white students prior to Brown, the student enrollment has been transformed such that white
students are no longer the majority and Latino students are the second largest racial group,
followed by black students.
Our country’s public school enrollment is substantially more diverse than it was in 1954 when it
was comprised of two main racial groups—black and white. With a truly multiracial student
enrollment, it is essential that we revisit Brown to reconceptualize what it means to desegregate
our schools so that students from all racial backgrounds can learn together. Since l980 the basic
response to these changes and the evidence of unequal education has been more testing and
accountability requirements, not addressing race relations or segregation. As the number of
Latino students has increased, the segregation of Latino students has also deepened. As of the
last 15 years, an even larger share of Latino students than black students attend intensely
segregated schools. This growth came long after the serious desegregation efforts of the l960s, so
their segregation problem was largely ignored.
Within each of these broad racial categories, it is also important to note that there is great
variation. For example, the category for Asian students includes students from a wide variety of
socioeconomic and historical backgrounds as well as different levels of access to educational
opportunities. The same is true for students in the category for multiracial students and each of
the other racial groups. We acknowledge that by using these categories, our analysis does not
convey the true diversity that exists within racial groups or the widely varying combinations of
interracial backgrounds that exist. Due to limitations of existing data sources and research we
can only highlight the basic trends and underscore the importance of attending to the even
greater racial and ethnic diversity that exists across the nation.4 Our schools are complex and
4
Within the Asian and Pacific Islander category, the San Francisco Unified school district, for example, recognizes:
Asian Indian; Cambodian; Chinese; Filipino; Guamanian; Hawaiian; Japanese; Korean; Laotian; Other Asian; Other
Pacific Islanders; Samoan; Tahitian; Vietnamese; Hmong (SFUSD, Racial and Ethnic Reporting FACs).
unequal but our policy framework is locked into the realities of what our society used to look
like.
A note on data changes on school poverty. A conflict between information needs and efficiency
in administering free lunch programs has produced a serious obstacle in understanding school
poverty and its impacts on learning and segregation. It has been apparent for generations that
schools with racial segregation and schools with concentrated poverty both produce less
academic success for students, and most of the schools that rank high on either measure have
both. Researchers have typically had only one measure of school and student poverty, the percent
of students on free or reduced school lunch, numbers that are much higher than in the past. This
measure was created not to be a poverty measure but for the free lunch program but it was
widely used because there was no other available measure of the percent low-income students for
all schools. Although not perfect,5 it counted students that annually submitted paperwork
verifying that their family’s income was less than 185% of the poverty line.
This data became widely available in the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core in the
early l990s, and we have consistently looked at the relationship ever since. Racial and poverty
segregation have been highly correlated. Now there is a serious data problem on this important
issue. In many schools where the great majority of the students were on free lunch it was a large
administrative task to keep track of who could or could not get free lunch and some students
were embarrassed to participate. The government, after many years, decided that it would be
more efficient all around, where there was 40% or more free lunch students, to offer school
districts the opportunity to provide all the children breakfast and lunch at no cost, but that meant
that the statistics at those schools would no longer accurately represent the percentage of students
from low-income households.6 So now one-sixth of all schools—including a larger share of
students of color—are attending schools at which we can’t ascertain from existing data the
percentage of low-income students. We saw the linkage of racial and economic segregation as
basic reasons for many of the inequalities in educational opportunity of low-income nonwhite
schools.7 Now, in those schools (community eligibility provision or CEP)8 schools reporting
100% free lunch, we simply do not know the actual relationship. In another nearly 15,000
schools, data on participation in National School Lunch Program was either not provided or
missing in the most recent year of Common Core Data. On the other hand, in many schools we
know the actual percent of poor children and we can still partially explore the relationship.
Obviously, we need better ways to measure school level poverty to study fundamental issues.
5
Harwell, M., & LeBeau, B. (2010). Student eligibility for a free lunch as an SES measure in education research.
Educational Researcher, 39(2), 120-131.
6
Our exploratory analysis of the data found variation in how CEP schools reported the number of students from
low-income households.
7
For review of the literature on benefits of racially and economically diverse schools, see Ayscue, J., Frankenberg,
E., & Siegel-Hawley, G. (2017). The complementary benefits of racial and socioeconomic diversity in
schools. Washington, DC: The National Coalition on School Diversity. Research Brief No. 10.
8
To be eligible to participate in CEP, the percentage of identified low-income students must be at least 40 percent of
enrollment. For more information, see https://www.fns.usda.gov/school-meals/community-eligibility-provision
Growing Division Affecting Schools
Despite the growing diversity, the larger political climate has complicated educators’ efforts to
effectively make schools welcoming for the students they enroll who are increasingly
multiracial. In understanding this study’s results regarding school segregation, it is important to
underline how the overall school climate in American public schools has been affected by
divisive and aggressive recent political dialogues. Concerns about racially polarized rhetoric and
related changes in immigration policy have affected teachers and students over the past years.
From the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump has made
explicitly negative statements toward immigrants and certain racial and ethnic groups, possibly
affecting the American public in different ways.9 Grave concerns about the repercussions of his
xenophobic statements have become very prominent.10
Research studies have shown that these conflicts have exacerbated racial and ethnic problems in
schools, including noticeable changes in school climate. For example, Huang and Cornell
(2019)11 analyzed survey data collected from about 155,000 7th and 8th graders in Virginia in
2013, 2015, and 2017. The study results revealed statistically meaningful differences in spring
2017 in terms of both students’ reports of being bullied and their observations of teasing about
race and ethnicity. With ethnicity and immigration becoming central political themes, partisan
divisions have affected students and teachers, adding new dimensions to segregation and
diversity. The researchers reported a statistically significant difference in experiencing such
incidents between students living in places supporting the Republican candidate and the
Democratic candidate for president. Specifically, students living in localities favoring the
Republican candidate were more likely to encounter bullying and to observe their peers teased
due to their race/ethnicity in the 2017 (post-election) outcome. In the 2015 (pre-election) result,
however, no meaningful difference emerged. The study findings do imply that a potential
association between presidential remarks and students’ hostile behaviors and racial
microaggressions could exist, although further investigation is required. In another study, UCLA
Professor John Rogers and his team examined survey data in which more than 1,500 high school
educators across the nation participated to explore the overall impact of the political rhetoric on
high school students.12 The study reported that educators in predominantly white schools (80-
9
Blake, J. (2018, June 29). One word shows how much we've changed the way we talk about race. CNN U.S.
Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/us/racial-rhetoric/index.html; Desjardins, L. (2018, August 23).
How Trump talks about race. PBS News Hour. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/every-
moment-donald-trumps-long-complicated-history-race; Leonhardt, D., & Philbrick, I. P. (2018, January 15). Donald
Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List. The New York Times. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-
racist.html?mtrref=www.google.com&assetType=opinion
10
Bazelon, E. (2016, November 16). Bullying in the Age of Trump. The New York Times Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/opinion/bullying-in-the-age-of-trump.html; Samaha, A., Hayes, M., & Ansari,
T. (2017, June 6). Kids Are Quoting Trump to Bully Their Classmates and Teachers Don’t Know What to Do about
It. BuzzFeed News. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertsamaha/kids-are-quoting-trump-to-
bully-their-classmates
11
Huang, F. L., & Cornell, D. G. (2019). School Teasing and Bullying After the Presidential Election. Educational
Researcher, 48(2), 69-83. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X18820291
12
Rogers, J. (2017), Teaching and Learning in the Age of Trump: Increasing Stress and Hostility in America’s High
Schools, UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved from
100% white enrollment) were more likely to witness students making derogatory remarks about
other racial/ ethnic groups and immigrants compared to educators in predominantly students of
color schools.
The escalating levels of antipathy and division noticed in school communities across the nation
add another dimension to school segregation and to the benefits of interracial contact on
diminishing racial stereotypes that seriously threaten national cohesion. As this report
demonstrates, American public schools have become increasingly diverse in terms of race and
ethnicity, which also encompass varying characteristics among different groups, including,
language, culture, religion, and immigration status. Despite this increasing diversity in our
society, data in this report also show that segregation has been increasing the share of schools in
which students do not have sufficient and appropriate opportunities to develop emotional and
cognitive competences to embrace and respect other groups different from themselves in various
ways. More than six decades have passed after the Brown decision. Nevertheless, our nation is
facing a critical moment in which we must address the importance of integration that includes
not only race and ethnicity but also more comprehensive factors, such as language, religion, and
immigration status. We must act now.
Current Barriers to Further Integration
Due to the changing federal judiciary and a series of Court decisions, many districts are being
released from court oversight, which is contributing to resegregation in the South for black
students.13 Further, because states and districts no longer have laws and policies that explicitly
assign students to schools on the basis of their race to maintain racial segregation and because
the Supreme Court has limited and ended remedies, there are few new federal cases challenging
segregation though there are a range of ways in which decisions by policymakers and by families
contribute to the segregation in schools that we describe here.
Desegregation struggles have often focused on urban districts that disproportionately enrolled
more students of color. In a decision two decades after Brown, the U.S. Supreme Court limited
the extent to which courts could include suburban districts in desegregation remedies—a
decision that was especially constraining outside of the South where metropolitan areas were
fragmented into more districts. This mattered because urban districts required to desegregate
were often surrounded by many largely white districts untouched by similar desegregation
obligations, creating an incentive for white families to settle there.
Now suburban districts are much less racially homogeneous, particularly in our largest
metropolitan areas. As our population has suburbanized, suburban schools are enrolling a
growing share of the metro enrollment, including students of color and low-income students.
These demographic patterns have been layered on top of a maze of school district boundary
lines, which are sorting students in the suburbs similar to racial change in cities in the 20th
https://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/publications/publications/files/teaching-and-learning-in-the-age-of-
trump/at_download/file
13
E.g., Reardon, S. F., Grewal, E. T., Kalogrides, D., & Greenberg, E. (2012). Brown fades: The end of court-
ordered school desegregation and the resegregation of American public schools. Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management, 31(4), 876-904.
century. Black and Latino suburban students go to school with many fewer white children than
white public school students. Differences in student composition and perceived school quality
get capitalized into home prices in uneven ways, resulting in vastly different tax bases that
school districts can tap to support the public schools. Thus, we’re seeing patterns of segregation
and inequality spreading on a wider geographic scale, and considerable complexity among
suburban districts. These very districts, however, may only recently be diverse and lack policies,
programs, or expertise to understand and address barriers to full inclusion and opportunity.
Moreover, suburbs are less likely to have the same supports as cities do for low-income students
or students of color that can be crucial to ensuring policies like student assignment don’t
exacerbate existing residential segregation. In a number of suburban districts—as well as
countywide districts containing suburban areas—the increasing diversity has engendered
contentious debates about student assignment policies, particularly those that would try to reduce
segregation.14
Mindful of the segregation and inequality across district boundary lines, some areas have sought
regional approaches to reducing racial isolation, either voluntarily or as a result of court orders.
Such plans have dwindled in recent years, but remain popular where implemented and students
generally had impressive social and academic gains.15 Interdistrict desegregation efforts also
include magnet schools that intentionally draw from multiple districts and Omaha’s innovative
Learning Community.16 Two on-going state court cases in Minnesota and New Jersey are
challenging how district boundary lines segregate students; in 1996, Connecticut’s Supreme
Court also found that the state’s district boundaries segregated students.
Despite the segregating effect that school district boundary lines can have, there are also dozens
of districts that have seceded from larger districts in recent years although this was earlier
blocked by the Supreme Court. This is of particular concern in areas like the South, in which
homogeneous communities are seceding from more diverse districts.17 Because of the tradition
of local control, students are rarely assigned across school district boundaries and when new
lines such as those in a number of counties in the south are created that separate students by
racial and/or economic lines, that can have effects on segregation that deepen over time.18 The
14
Parcel, T. L., and A.J. Taylor. 2015. The end of consensus: Diversity, neighborhoods, and the politics of public
school assignments. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press; Frankenberg, E. & Orfield, G. (Eds.)
(2012). The resegregation of suburban schools: A hidden crisis in American education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Education Press; Eaton, S. 2012. Not your father’s suburb: Race and rectitude in a changing Minnesota community.
One Nation Indivisible.
15
Amy Stuart Wells, Bianca J. Baldridge, Jacquelyn Duran, Courtney Grzesikowski, Richard Lofton, Allison Roda,
Miya Warner, and Terenda White, Boundary crossing for diversity, equity, and achievement. (Cambridge: Charles
Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, 2009); Susan E. Eaton, The other Boston busing story: What’s won
and lost across the boundary line. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
16
Holme, J.J., & Finnegan, K. (2018). Striving in common: A regional equity framework for urban schools.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
17
EdBuild. (2017). Fractured: The breakdown of America’s school districts. Jersey City, NJ: Author. Retrieved
from https://edbuild.org/content/fractured/fractured-full-report.pdf; Frankenberg, E., Siegel-Hawley, G., & Diem, S.
(2017). Segregation by boundary line: The fragmentation of Memphis area schools. Educational Researcher 46(8),
449-463; Frankenberg, E., & Taylor, K. (2017). School district secessions: How boundary lines stratify school and
neighborhood populations in Jefferson County, Alabama, 1968-2014. University Park, PA: Center for Education and
Civil Rights.
18
Frankenberg, E. (2009). Splintering school districts: Understanding the link between segregation and
fragmentation. Law and Social Inquiry, 34(4): 869-909.
permissiveness of state secession laws varies widely, and if districts are under court order,
proposed secessions should be reviewed to ascertain whether they will inhibit the ability to
comply with the existing desegregation order.
What we see across the country is double segregation by race and class and a long period with
few positive initiatives in spite of accumulating evidence on the educational and social costs of
segregation. The statistics in the pages that follow document deeply divided patterns of schooling
in our racially polarized country in a heightened period of racial conflict in our public life. When
you add the statistics documenting the long-term changes in the composition of the nation’s
children to those about their separation in schools it is apparent that these are very high stakes
trends threatening the future.
CHANGES IN PUBLIC SCHOOL ENROLLMENT
Over the last five decades, our nation’s public school enrollment has grown larger in size and
more diverse by race. A system that enrolled 43 million students in 1968 now enrolls 49.4
million students (Table 1).19 Shifting from a predominantly two-race public school system of a
majority white enrollment and where black students comprised most of the non-white enrollment
in the 1960s, the current United States public school enrollment is truly multiracial. The white
share of our nation’s public school enrollment has been declining, and for the first time in our
decades of analyzing desegregation trends, white students now comprise less than half of our
nation’s public school enrollment.20 In 2016, the public school enrollment across the United
States was 48.4% white, 26.3% Latino, 15.2% black, 5.5% Asian, and 1.0% American Indian
(Figure 1).
Further, more than half of students of color identify as Latino—representing a dramatic

transformation in the nation’s public school enrollment in less than a half-century. Alongside the
declining white share of enrollment, the Latino share of enrollment has been rapidly increasing
such that by 2016, Latino students accounted for more than one-fourth of our nation’s public
school students. Although it remains relatively small, the Asian share of enrollment has also been
increasing. The black share of public school enrollment has remained relatively stable around 15-
17% over the last four and a half decades, but has declined by approximately 500,000 students in
the last decade.21
19
Ee, J., Orfield, G., & Teitell, J. (2017). Private schools in American education: A small sector still lagging in
diversity. (Working Paper). Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civile.
20
In 2013, the last year of data in our previous report, the public school enrollment was exactly 50% white. See
Orfield, G., Ee, J., Frankenberg, E., & Siegel-Hawley, G. (2016). Brown at 62: School segregation by race, poverty
and state. Los Angeles, CA: Civil Rights Project/ Proyecto Derechos Civiles.
21
The racial/ethnic classifications used in federal datasets have shifted over time to reflect changing construction of
racial/ethnic identity. Thus, the racial/ethnic classification of student data from 2011 and 2016 included in this report
differs from that used in earlier years. See Lee, C., & Orfield, G. (2006). Data proposals threaten education and
civil rights accountability. Cambridge, MA: Civil Rights Project.
Table 1: Public School Enrollment by Race (in Millions): 1968 to 2016-17
1968 1988 2006 2011 2016
White 34.7 23.6 26.9 25.1 23.9
Black 6.3 5.3 8.0 7.5 7.5
Latino 2.0 3.9 9.7 11.4 13.0
Asian - 1.1 2.2 2.5 2.7
American Indian - 0.3 0.6 0.5 0.5
Multiracial - - - 1.2 1.8
Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data
(CCD), Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17, 2011-12, 2006-07, and 1988-89.
Data for 1968 were obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data in Orfield, G. (1983). Public
School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political Studies.
Figure 1: Percentage of Student Population in Public Schools, by Race, 1970 to 2016-17
90
79.1
80 73.2
68.8
70
56.7
60 52.0
48.4
50
40
30 23.7
26.3
20.4
20 15.0 16.1 15.5 16.9 15.6
15.2
8.0 11.4 4.7 5.1
10 5.1 3.4 0.9 1.1
0.5 1.9 0.8 1.2 5.5
0.4
0 1.0
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
1970 1980 1988 2006 2011 2016
White 79.1 73.2 68.8 56.7 52.0 48.4
Black 15.0 16.1 15.5 16.9 15.6 15.2
Latino 5.1 8.0 11.4 20.4 23.7 26.3
Asian 0.5 1.9 3.4 4.7 5.1 5.5
American Indian 0.4 0.8 0.9 1.2 1.1 1.0
Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17, 2011-12, 2006-07, and 1988-89.
Data for 1968 were obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data in Orfield, G. (1983). Public School
Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political Studies.
Public School Enrollment by Region & State
Within these larger national trends, the racial composition of the public school enrollment varies
considerably by region. Table 2 shows that the South, which includes 11 states, enrolls the
greatest number of public school students (nearly 17 million) and has also grown the most in
enrollment during the last decade.
In both of our nation’s most populous regions, the South and the West, white students comprise
less than 50% of the public school enrollment. Also, in both of these regions, Latino students
account for a comparatively large share of enrollment, and are, in fact, the largest share of
enrollment in the West and second largest in the South.
In the South, white students comprise the largest share of enrollment (41.3%), but similar to the
national pattern, white students are no longer the majority. In 2016-17, the second largest racial
group among the public school enrollment was Latino students who accounted for 28.1%,
followed by black students who comprised 23.6% of the South’s enrollment. This is a shift from
a decade earlier when black students (26.3%), rather than Latino students (21.4%), comprised the
second largest racial group in the South’s public school enrollment. This region of the country
has long been home to the largest share of African American students—and, with nearly 4
million black students in the region represents more than half of all black students nationally.
In the West, the other most populous region of the country with almost 12 million students,
Latino students make up the largest share of enrollment (42.3%). In this region, white students
account for slightly more than one-third of the public school enrollment, followed by Asian
students who account for nearly one-tenth of the enrollment and black students who comprise
one-twentieth of the West’s public school enrollment.
The Midwest is, by far, the region of the country with the highest percentage of white students,
with a public school enrollment in which nearly two out of three students are white—yet this still
represents a decline from a decade earlier when nearly three in four students were white. As is
the case in other regions, a noteworthy trend in the Midwest is the increasing share of Latino
students. In 2016-17, the Latino share of enrollment (13.1%) is nearly as large as the black share
of enrollment (13.3%). In 2006-07, however, the black percentage of students was higher
(14.7%) while Latino students were considerably lower (8.6%).
The Northeast also remains majority white, enrolling 55.1% white students. As is the case in the
South and the West, Latino students account for the second largest racial group (20.7%) of the
Northeast’s public school enrollment. The Asian share of enrollment has increased by nearly 2
percentage points in the past decade, the largest percentage point gain for Asian students in any
region.
The Border states are unique in that the public school enrollment is predominantly white (59.7%)
followed by a substantially larger black share of enrollment (18.6%) than Latino share of
enrollment (11.0%). It is the only region where there is a substantially larger share of black than
Latino students, a result of a number of large districts that have a high percentage of black
students such as Washington, DC, and Baltimore, Maryland as well as large suburban districts
such as Prince George’s County, Maryland. Nevertheless, given the sharp growth rate of Latino
students in the region over the past decade,22 if such trends continue, the Border states are likely
to have similar shares of black and Latino students in the next decade or so.
Table 2: Percentage of Public-School Enrollment, by Race and Region: 2006-07 and 2016-17
US Total Northeast South
Region 2006 2016 2006 2016 2006 2016
Total Enrollment 47,495,472 49,471,656 7,947,143 7,666,386 15,235,194 16,818,278
% White 56.7 48.4 64.5 55.1 49.2 41.3
% Black 16.9 15.2 15.2 14.0 26.3 23.6
% Latino 20.4 26.3 14.6 20.7 21.4 28.1
% Asian 4.7 5.5 5.4 7.2 2.7 3.5
% American Indian 1.2 1.0 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.5
% Multiracial 3.6 2.7 3.0
Border Midwest West
Region 2006 2016 2006 2016 2006 2016
Total Enrollment 3,461,534 3,628,128 9,563,516 9,405,248 11,288,084 11,953,617
% White 67.5 59.7 73.0 64.9 44.4 37.6
% Black 20.5 18.6 14.7 13.3 6.2 4.8
% Latino 5.7 11.0 8.6 13.1 37.6 42.3
% Asian 2.5 3.2 2.8 3.7 9.4 9.2
% American Indian 3.8 2.9 0.9 0.8 2.3 1.7
% Multiracial 4.7 4.1 4.5
Note: Our definition of the regions is as follows: South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia; Border: Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland,
Missouri, Oklahoma, and West Virginia; Northeast: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont; Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska,
North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin; West: Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico,
Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17 and 2006-07.
In addition to racial composition differing between regions, there are also wide variations by
state. The two largest states, California and Texas, have less than 30% white students, and both
have a majority of students who are Latino. Washington, D.C., has a majority of students who
are black, and black students are also the largest group in the public schools in Mississippi.
Hawaii has a majority of Asian students, and two states on opposite coasts—California and New
Jersey—have at least one-tenth of students who are Asian. Five additional states have at least
one-tenth of students who are American Indian, and Hawaii and Alaska each have more than
10% of students who identify as multiracial. Table 3 shows that there are very different
demographic realities in our states, and many have sizeable shares of multiple racial/ethnic
groups in the public school enrollment.
22
Orfield, G., & Ee, J. (2017). Our segregated capital: An increasingly diverse city with racially polarized schools.
Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles.
Table 3: Total Enrollment and Racial Composition, by State: 2016-17
Total % % % % % Am. %
Enrollment White Black Latino Asian Indian Multiracial
Alabama 742,647 55.0 32.9 7.4 1.5 0.9 2.2
Alaska 129,350 47.8 3.0 6.7 8.9 22.9 10.7
Arizona 1,106,211 39.0 5.3 45.0 3.2 4.5 2.9
Arkansas 492,607 61.3 20.6 12.7 2.4 0.6 2.4
California 6,052,759 23.7 5.5 54.2 12.1 0.5 4.1
Colorado 884,388 54.0 4.6 33.2 3.4 0.7 4.0
Connecticut 515,233 55.3 12.7 23.6 5.3 0.3 2.9
Delaware 126,047 44.9 30.3 16.9 3.9 0.4 3.6
District of Columbia 83,960 10.8 69.3 16.2 1.7 0.2 1.9
Florida 2,752,409 38.9 21.9 32.6 2.9 0.3 3.4
Georgia 1,760,033 40.3 36.8 15.2 4.0 0.2 3.5
Hawaii 181,434 12.6 1.8 13.2 58.9 0.3 13.2
Idaho 291,026 75.8 1.1 17.9 1.5 1.2 2.5
Illinois 1,997,163 48.5 16.9 25.8 5.0 0.4 3.4
Indiana 1,047,563 68.6 12.5 11.6 2.4 0.2 4.8
Iowa 498,526 76.7 5.8 10.6 2.7 0.4 3.7
Kansas 489,540 64.6 6.9 19.5 3.0 0.9 5.1
Kentucky 674,272 77.8 10.3 6.3 1.8 0.1 3.6
Louisiana 712,783 45.1 44.0 6.4 1.7 0.7 2.3
Maine 175,389 89.8 3.5 2.1 1.6 0.7 2.3
Maryland 868,071 38.5 33.5 16.6 6.6 0.3 4.5
Massachusetts 913,378 61.3 8.9 19.2 7.0 0.2 3.4
Michigan 1,406,404 67.0 17.6 7.7 3.5 0.6 3.7
Minnesota 842,948 67.8 10.5 8.9 6.8 1.6 4.4
Mississippi 483,137 44.4 48.9 3.6 1.1 0.2 1.8
Missouri 909,356 71.8 15.9 6.2 2.2 0.4 3.6
Montana 146,298 79.0 0.9 4.5 1.0 11.2 3.4
Nebraska 319,194 66.9 6.7 18.6 2.8 1.4 3.6
Nevada 470,103 33.2 10.7 42.1 6.9 0.9 6.1
New Hampshire 179,762 86.2 2.0 5.2 3.3 0.3 3.0
New Jersey 1,337,574 45.5 15.4 27.1 10.2 0.1 1.7
New Mexico 329,116 23.4 1.9 61.4 1.3 10.2 1.7
New York 2,624,633 44.5 17.0 26.4 9.3 0.7 2.2
North Carolina 1,541,396 49.0 25.5 16.9 3.3 1.3 4.0
North Dakota 109,550 78.1 4.5 4.7 1.8 8.7 2.2
Ohio 1,702,827 70.7 16.4 5.4 2.3 0.1 5.0
Oklahoma 693,588 49.4 8.8 16.8 2.3 13.9 8.8
Oregon 565,963 63.0 2.3 22.7 4.7 1.4 5.9
Pennsylvania 1,698,060 66.8 14.6 10.9 3.9 0.2 3.6
Rhode Island 138,032 59.2 8.3 24.3 3.4 0.7 4.0
South Carolina 769,220 51.2 33.9 9.0 1.7 0.3 3.8
South Dakota 133,933 74.8 3.1 5.5 1.9 11.1 3.7
Tennessee 997,926 63.5 22.1 9.7 2.0 0.2 2.5
Texas 5,281,581 28.2 12.5 52.3 4.4 0.4 2.2
Utah 648,269 75.0 1.4 16.8 3.3 1.1 2.5
Vermont 84,325 90.5 2.1 1.9 2.1 0.2 3.3
Virginia 1,284,539 49.7 22.6 15.1 7.0 0.3 5.3
Washington 1,054,530 54.8 4.4 23.1 8.7 1.3 7.7
West Virginia 272,834 90.4 4.3 1.6 0.7 0.1 2.8
Wisconsin 857,600 70.6 9.1 11.7 4.0 1.2 3.5
Wyoming 94,170 78.1 1.1 14.0 1.0 3.6 2.3
Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17
Public School Enrollment by Types of Areas
The changing racial composition of the public school enrollment at the national level is reflected
in schools in all different types of geographic areas: cities and suburbs of varying sizes, along
with towns and rural areas. The racial composition of public school students differs and is
changing at a different rate, but one common pattern across all geographic areas is that the
percentage of white students has declined from 2006 to 2016 while the percentage of Latino
students has increased in each during the same time period (Table 4). For black students, their
percentage of the enrollment declined in most geographic areas, except for midsized suburban
schools where their percentage of the enrollment increased slightly. The pattern for changes in
the percentage of Asian students was mixed.
Table 4: Racial Composition of Public School Enrollment (%), by Types of Areas: 2006-07 & 2016-17
Large Metro Central City Suburb
2006 2016 2006 2016
White 22.1 20.3 56.9 46.9
Black 30.8 25.2 15.4 14.2
Latino 38.5 42.4 20.8 27.3
Asian 7.7 8.2 6.3 7.4
American Indian 0.9 0.7 0.5 0.4
Multiracial 3.3 3.8
Midsize Metro Central City Suburb
2006 2016 2006 2016
White 37.4 32.2 68.6 59.0
Black 29.4 24.0 10.2 10.3
Latino 26.6 33.2 16.5 22.0
Asian 5.9 5.7 4.1 3.5
Multiracial 4.4 4.7
Small Metro Central City Suburb
2006 2016 2006 2016
White 52.3 45.3 70.0 62.8
Black 19.1 17.4 10.2 8.3
Latino 21.9 25.0 15.6 20.8
Asian 5.8 6.9 3.5 3.5
Multiracial 4.6 3.9
Other Town Rural
2006 2016 2006 2016
White 70.0 63.1 75.8 70.0
Black 11.3 9.9 10.2 9.3
Latino 14.8 19.8 9.9 13.8
Asian 1.8 1.7 1.9 1.8
Multiracial 3.4 3.0
Note: Large, midsize, and small metros refer to areas with populations of 250,000 or more, less than 250,000 but greater than or
equal to 100,000, and less than 100,000, respectively. A central city refers to a territory inside an urbanized area and inside a
principal city. A suburb refers to a territory outside a principal city but inside an urbanized area. Towns refer to territories inside
an urban cluster. Rural areas refer to territories outside an urban cluster. More details can be found here:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/docs/EDGE_NCES_LOCALE_2016.pdf
Source: U.S. Department of Education, NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2006-07 and
2016-17.
In 2016, central cities continue to have a more diverse public school enrollment than their
corresponding suburban areas, particularly in large and midsize metropolitan areas (Figure 2).
Suburban areas of large metropolitan areas are closest to reflecting the overall racial composition
of public school students and have a lower percentage of white students than suburban schools in
smaller metros. In the last decade, suburban schools in large metropolitan areas have experienced
the highest decline in the percentage of white students, reflecting suburbanization of families of
color. Latino students are the largest group of students in central cities in large and midsize
metros (white students are the third largest group behind Latino and black students in large
central cities). Non-metropolitan areas have the highest percentage of white students.
Figure 2: Racial Composition of Public School Enrollment (%), by Types of Areas, 2016-17
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Central Suburb Central Suburb Central Suburb Town Rural
City City City
Large Metro Midsize Metro Small Metro Non-Metro Area
White Black Latino Asian American Indian Multiracial
Note: Large, midsize, and small metros refer to areas with populations of 250,000 or more, less than 250,000 but greater than or
equal to 100,000, and less than 100,000, respectively. A central city refers to a territory inside an urbanized area and inside a
principal city. A suburb refers to a territory outside a principal city but inside an urbanized area. Towns refer to territories inside
an urban cluster. Rural areas refer to territories outside an urban cluster. More details can be found here:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/docs/EDGE_NCES_LOCALE_2016.pdf
Source: U.S. Department of Education, NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17.
TRENDS IN SEGREGATION
Having seen the tremendous changes that continue to take place among the public school
enrollment, we now turn to understanding how those students are sorted among public schools.
One way to measure segregation is through the concentration of non-white students in schools.
Figure 3 shows the percentage of intensely segregated schools, that is schools that enroll 90-
100% non-white students or 90-100% white students. Since the peak of desegregation for black
students in 1988, the share of intensely segregated minority schools, that is, schools that enroll
90-100% non-white students, has more than tripled from 5.7% in 1988 to 18.2% in 2016. During
the same time period, the share of intensely segregated white schools, that is, schools that enroll
90-100% white students, has declined from 38.9% in 1988 to 16% in 2016. The percentage of
white students enrolled in intensely segregated white schools has also decreased from 36.1% in
2006 to 26% in 2011 and 19.6% in 2016 according to our analysis of CCD data. Because the
share of intensely segregated white schools and the share of white students attending such
schools have decreased, it is possible that white people could perceive an increase in interracial
contact even though students of color are increasingly segregated. Also noteworthy in these
trends is that the share of intensely segregated minority schools (18.2%) is now greater than the
share of intensely segregated white schools (16%).
Figure 3: Percentage of Intensely Segregated Schools, 1988-2016

45
38.9
40
35
31.2
30 28.7
25
20.7
20 18.2
15 16.7
14.8 14.8 16
10
5 5.7
0
1988 1995 2002 2009 2016
1988 2003 2006 2011 2016
90-100 White Schools 38.9 31.2 28.7 20.7 16
90-100% Non-White Schools 5.7 14.8 14.8 16.7 18.2
Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.
Another way to measure segregation is through the exposure that a typical student of each race
has to students of other races.23 Figure 4 shows that the typical student of each race (except for
the typical Asian student) attends a school in which the largest share of his/her schoolmates are
same-race peers. For example, in 2016, the typical white student attended a school in which more
than two-thirds (69.3%) of his or her peers were also white. The typical white student’s school
was only 13.7% Latino, 8.1% black, and 4.2% Asian. This pattern is in striking contrast to the
schools attended by the typical black and the typical Latino students. The typical white student
attended a school with more than two-thirds white peers while the typical black student and the
typical Latino student attend schools with about one-fourth white peers. The typical black
student’s school was predominantly (47.1%) black with the remainder of the student body
comprised of 25.8% white students, 19.6% Latino students, and 3.7% Asian students. The typical
Latino student’s school was 55.1% Latino, 25.2% white, 11.3% black, and 4.9% Asian.
Although Asian students did not account for the largest share of the typical Asian student’s
23
For more discussion of different measures of segregation, see Orfield, G., Siegel-Hawley, G., & Kucsera, J.
(2014). Sorting out deepening confusion on segregation trends. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto
Derechos Civiles.
school, they did account for a disproportionately large portion. The typical Asian student’s
school was 37% white, 24.1% Asian, 23.3% Latino, and 10.4% black.
Figure 4: Racial Composition of Schools Attended by the Typical Student of Each Race: 2016-2017
100.0 4.2 3.7 4.9
90.0
13.7 19.6 24.1
80.0
70.0 8.1
55.1
60.0 23.3
50.0 47.1
40.0 10.4
69.3
30.0 11.3
20.0 37.0
10.0 25.8 25.2
0.0
White Student Black Student Latino Student Asian Student
% White % Black % Latino % Asian
Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17.
Note: percentages do not add up to 100 percent due to the exclusion of American Indian students.
Double Segregation
Racial segregation and economic segregation frequently overlap in K-12 public schools.24 Black
and Latino students, on average attend schools with a far higher share of poverty, measured by
eligibility for free/reduced price lunch. Our earlier reports have consistently documented this
relationship over the last quarter century. In 2001-02, for example, in our Brown at 50 report, we
found that 88% of schools with 90-100% black and Latino students were schools where a
majority of students were from low-income households. Just 15% of 0-10% black and Latino
schools had similar levels of low-income students.25 A decade later, in our Brown at 60 report,
the overlap between racial and low-income concentrations was even stronger: half of 90-100%
black and Latino schools had 90-100% students from low-income households. Just 1.9% of 0-
10% black schools had 90-100% of students from low-income households and two-thirds of 0-
10% black and Latino schools had a majority of students not eligible for free/reduced priced
lunch. Likewise, new analysis from the Kids Count Data Center shows that 28% of African
American children and 19% of Latino children are living in areas of concentrated poverty,
compared to 6% of Asian children and just 4% of whites according to American Community
24
See U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2016). K–12 education: Better use of information could help
agencies identify disparities and address racial discrimination. Washington, DC. Retrieved from
https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-345
25
Orfield, G. & Lee, C. (January 2004). Brown at 50: Plessy’s Nightmare or Brown’s Promise? Cambridge, MA:
The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
Survey data from 2013-2017. 26 Other research has shown socioeconomic disparities by race,
especially when measuring wealth, but these data suggest that part of the concerning inheritance
of severe residential segregation is the disproportionate exposure to concentrated poverty, which
then is a root cause of school segregation.27
Schools with high concentrations of low-income students meet the federal Community Eligibility
Provision (CEP),28 which permits but does not require districts and schools to provide free
breakfast and lunch to all students who attend the school without collecting individual
applications. The CEP not only increases access to free meals for all students, but it also
addresses other hurdles to implementation—the administrative burden for schools who had to
annually certify students’ eligibility and the stigma/fear of turning in the paperwork that may not
have accurately identified all students eligible for subsidized meals.29 Nevertheless, the
introduction of the CEP also raised a critical question of whether the free/reduced price lunch
data could be used as an accurate measure for school poverty because it can potentially
(artificially) increase the overall poverty rate since it reports all students receiving free/reduced
price lunch regardless of their individual eligibility.30 Since this has been the basic measure of
school poverty in educational research this is a major problem.
Our exploratory analysis of low-income data in the U.S. Education Department’s Common Core
of Data found wide variation by CEP status and number of students eligible for free/reduced
price lunch. Particularly for CEP schools, we were not sure how accurate the reported counts of
low-income students were. We also know from analysis of Common Core Data that there were
schools with more than 40% of students who were receiving free/reduced priced lunch that had
not chosen to participate in CEP. In other words, non-CEP schools were not necessarily middle-
class schools. And, the large number of schools that didn’t report any or missing information
also threatened the validity of analyzing double segregation when nearly 20% of schools weren’t
included. Obviously, we could not conduct our typical analysis of the correlation of school-level
percentage of low-income students and the school percentage of black and Latino students that
has historically shown how strongly economic and racial segregation overlap.
However, we report this information to help further this discussion about how to explore an
important relationship for students’ educational experiences. Using a threshold of 40 percent or
more students eligible for free/reduced price lunch—the same guideline that the National School
26
"Children living in areas of concentrated poverty by race and ethnicity in the United States", 2019.
https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/7753-children-living-in-areas-of-concentrated-poverty-by-race-and-
ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/1691,1607,1572,1485,1376,1201,1074,880/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/14943,14942
27
This also relates to the vast disparities in funding for schools serving predominantly white enrollments as
compared to those that serve predominantly students of color. According to a new report from EdBuild, such
districts are also less likely to receive significantly less funding that cumulatively is a $23 billion funding gap
between predominantly white (75-100% white) and predominantly minority (0-25% white) districts. See
https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion
28
To be eligible to participate in CEP, the percentage of identified low-income students must be at least 40 percent
of enrollment.
29
Logan, C. W., Connor, P., Harvill, E. L., Harkness, J., Nisar, H., Checkoway, A., Peck, L. R., Shivji, A., Bein, E.,
Levin, M., & Enver, A. (2014 February). Community eligibility provision evaluation. Project Officer: John R.
Endahl. Prepared by Abt Associates for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service.
30
Snyder, T., & Musu-Gillette, L. (2015). Free or reduced price lunch: A proxy for poverty? Retrieved from
https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/free-or-reduced-price-lunch-a-proxy-for-poverty
Lunch Program (NSLP) applied—to identify school poverty status, we tentatively identified four
types of schools: (1) non-CEP and non-poverty schools (n=24,252), (2) CEP and non-poverty
schools (n=590), (3) non-CEP and poverty schools (n=32,449), and (4) CEP and poverty schools
(n=12,991).
The reality in our schools is that segregation by race usually means segregation by concentrated
poverty as well. This means that most students of color attend schools which reflect the problems
of poverty in many, less qualified teachers, peer groups, parent influence, and many other
limitations, richly documented in the research on the sociology of education. The fact that these
children come from the families with least wealth, the most risk of hunger, homelessness,
untreated health problems and many other forms of inequality means that the schools have less
capacity to help the doubly segregated students or to provide the opportunities and connections
routinely available in middle class schools. If students were only segregated by skin color or
Latino ethnicity, it would still be a serious problem but less devastating if the segregated children
came from families and communities with equal resources. They do not. This is why gathering
accurate data to assess whether there is an overlap between racial and economic segregation is so
critical.
Black Student Segregation
In addition to the measures showing the typical racial composition students of different racial
groups, this report also measures the share of students who attend schools with highly
concentrated nonwhite enrollments. When examining the share of black students who attended
intensely segregated schools, that is, schools that are 90-100% non-white, 1988 was the peak of
desegregation for black students (Table 5). Over the last three decades, black students have been
increasingly segregated in intensely segregated schools, and by 2016, 40% of all black students
were in schools with 90% or more students of color. While the percentage of the student
enrollment that are students of color is higher than in previous years, 90-100% of enrollment that
is non-white are schools that vary considerably from the racial composition of all students.
This pattern of increasing segregation for black students holds true for all regions of the country,
except the Midwest, where the share of black students attending intensely segregated schools has
steadily decreased since 2001. With more than half of all black public school students (51.5%)
attending intensely segregated schools in 2016, the Northeast is the most segregated region of the
country for black students. Our nation’s two most populous regions of the country, the South and
the West, are the least segregated regions for black students, although both have seen higher
increases since 2011 in the percentage of black students in intensely segregated nonwhite
schools. In 2016, 36.4% of black students in the South and 37.7% of black students in the West
attended intensely segregated schools.
Table 5: Percentage of Black Students in 90-100% Non-White Schools, by Region:1968-2016
Change between
1968 1988 2001 2006 2011 2016
1988-2016
Northeast 42.7 48.0 51.2 50.8 51.4 51.5 3.5
South 77.8 24.0 31.0 32.9 34.2 36.4 12.4
Border 60.2 34.5 41.6 40.9 40.9 42.2 7.7
Midwest 58.0 41.8 46.8 45.8 43.1 42.0 0.2
West 50.8 28.6 30.0 30.1 34.0 37.7 9.1
National 64.3 32.1 37.4 38.5 38.8 40.1 8.0
Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17, 2011-12, 2006-07, 2001-02 and
1988-89. Data for 1968 were obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data in Orfield, G. (1983). Public School
Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political Studies.
In 2016, in the top four most segregated states for black students—New York, California,
Illinois, and Maryland—the typical black student attended a school with less than 20% white
students (Table 6). In all four of these states, the majority of black students attended an intensely
segregated school, that is, a school that enrolled less than 10% white students (Table 7). In all 20
of the most segregated states for black students, the typical black student attended a school with
less than 32% white students. In all 20 of these states, at least one in four black students attended
an intensely segregated school, and on average about 40% did so.
As was the case in our analysis of students in 2011 (see appendix),31 New York remains the most
segregated state for black students. In Illinois and New York, two highly segregated states for
black students, the overall percentage of black students enrolled in the states’ schools is around
the national average—16.9% and 17.0% respectively. In these two states, as well Maryland,
where black students comprise 33.5% of the state’s enrollment, high levels of racial segregation
for black students are likely related to extreme segregation between districts as well as the
concentration of black students in Chicago, New York City, and Baltimore.32 To alleviate such
segregation, more attention to regional or interdistrict schooling may be needed.
Some of these states have low levels of exposure to white students because there are relatively
few white students in the state. One example is California, where black students have the second
lowest exposure to white students in the country, and has declined slightly since 2011 (see
appendix). Since California has a small fraction of African American students and few majority
black schools, more integration is possible; but typical black students are attending schools with
twice as many Latino students than black fellow students and just over half of black students are
31
Orfield, G., Frankenberg, E., Ee, J., & Kucsera, J. (2014). Brown at 60: Great progress, a long retreat and an
uncertain future. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles.
32
Kucsera, J., & Orfield, G. (2014 March). New York State's extreme school segregation: Inequality, inaction and a
damaged future. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles; Ayscue, J. B., Flaxman, G.,
Kucsera, J., & Siegel-Hawley, G., (2013 April). Settle for segregation or strive for diversity? A defining moment for
Maryland's public schools. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. Earlier the
Project produced a study of the schools in metro Chicago. See McArdle, N. (2002). Race, Place and Opportunity:
Racial Change and Segregation in the Chicago Metropolitan Area: 1990-2000. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/metro-and-regional-inequalities/race-place-and-opportunity-racial-
change-and-segregation-in-the-chicago-metropolitan-area-1990-2000
in 90-100% non-white schools. California has dissolved its major desegregation plans and the
state policies and office that formerly worked on intergroup relations.33
Nine out of 10 of the states in which black students have the lowest exposure to white students
are states in which the majority of students enrolled in the public schools are non-white;
Michigan is the lone state with a majority of white students and yet very low exposure to white
students for black public school students. However, there are a number of states New York,
Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Georgia, or Michigan in which black exposure to white students
is much lower than the overall state percentage of white students. None of these states comes
close to reflecting the state’s white population in the school attended by the typical black student.
There are a number of states, like Michigan, in which there is a fairly high percentage of white
students in the state’s public schools and yet, despite this, black students have relatively low
exposure to white students. Other Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin had
similar or higher percentages of white students (at least two thirds of students were white) while
black students, on average, attended public schools that had less than 30% white students. The
gap between white percentage of students and black exposure is indicative of segregation, due
either to segregation across or within boundaries.
Table 6: Lowest Black Student Exposure to White Students by State: 2016-17

Black Exposure to White Students State Percentage of White Students
1 New York 15.2 44.5
2 California 16.2 23.7
3 Illinois 18.2 48.5
4 Maryland 18.2 38.5
5 Texas 20.2 28.2
6 New Jersey 21.6 45.5
7 Nevada 22.1 33.2
8 Georgia 22.7 40.3
9 Mississippi 24.7 44.4
10 Michigan 25.2 67.0
11 Florida 25.3 38.9
12 Louisiana 25.7 45.1
13 Tennessee 26.8 63.5
14 Connecticut 27.1 55.3
15 Pennsylvania 27.3 66.8
16 Wisconsin 27.9 70.6
17 Alabama 28.9 55.0
18 Ohio 29.4 70.7
19 Missouri 30.9 71.8
20 Arizona 31.2 39.0
Note: The calculations for this state table do not include Hawaii, Alaska, or any other state with less than 5% black. District of
Columbia was not counted as a state, but the district had the highest segregation rates across all indicators.
33
Orfield, G. &Ee, J. (2014 May). Segregating California's future: Inequality and its alternative 60 years after
Brown v. Board of Education. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles.
Table 7: Highest Percentages of Black Students in 90-100% Non-white Schools by State: 2016-17
% Black Students in 90-100% Non-White Schools State % of Black Students
1 New York 65.2 17.0
6 Michigan 48.1 17.6
8 Georgia 45.8 36.8
10 Mississippi 44.7 48.9
11 Tennessee 44.4 22.1
12 Texas 43.3 12.5
13 Missouri 41.5 15.9
15 Alabama 40.6 32.9
16 Ohio 38.9 16.4
17 Florida 35.6 21.9
18 Nevada 31.5 10.7
19 Indiana 29.9 12.5
20 Rhode Island 28.6 8.3
Note: The calculations for this state table do not include Hawaii, Alaska, or any other state with less than 5% black. District of Columbia
was not counted as a state, but the district had the highest segregation rates across all indicators.
Latino Student Segregation
In 2016, an even higher percentage of Latino students than black students were in intensely
segregated nonwhite schools, 41.6% nationally, continuing a pattern of rising percentages of
Latino students in such schools since 1968. The largest share of Latino students attended
intensely segregated schools in the West (46.2%) (Table 8), which is the region that also had the
largest portion of Latino student enrollment. Although the overall share of Latino students who
attended intensely segregated schools remained high at 43.5% in the Northeast, this region has
experienced a slight decline in the percentage of Latino students attending intensely segregated
schools since 2001. In 2016, a large share of Latino students (41.9%) attended intensely
segregated schools in the South, and this pattern is getting worse. Compared to other regions,
smaller shares of Latino students attended intensely segregated schools in the Midwest and
Border states. In the Midwest, the portion of Latino students attending intensely segregated
schools has remained fairly stable around 25-27% since 1988, but in the Border states, the share
of Latino students enrolled in intensely segregated schools has steadily increased since 2001.
Table 8: Percentage of Latino Students in 90-100% Non-White Schools, by Region:1968-2016
Change between
1968 1988 2001 2006 2011 2016
1988-2016
Northeast 44.0 44.2 44.8 44.2 44.1 43.5 -0.7
South 33.7 37.9 39.9 40.3 41.5 41.9 4.0
Border - - 14.2 17.6 20.0 24.3 -
Midwest 6.8 24.9 24.6 26.7 26.1 24.9 0.0
West 11.7 27.5 37.4 42.2 44.7 46.2 18.7
National 23.1 33.1 37.4 40.0 41.1 41.6 8.5
Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17, 2011-12, 2006-07, 2001-02, and
1988-89. Data for 1968 were obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data in Orfield, G. (1983). Public
School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political Studies.
In 2016, in the top seven states for lowest Latino student exposure to white students, the typical
Latino student attended a school in which less than 25% of his or her peers was a white student
(Table 9). For all 20 of the most segregated states for Latino students, the typical Latino student
attended a school with less than 39% white students. In the top three most segregated states for
Latino students in intensely segregated schools—California, New York, and Texas—more than
half of Latino students attended intensely segregated schools in 2016 (Table 10); this is one
fewer state than for black students where a majority are in 90-100% nonwhite schools. For the
top 10 most segregated states for Latino students, more than 1 in 3 Latino students attended an
intensely segregated school in 2016. For the top eight, the number was 4, to almost 6 in 10.
In 2011, Louisiana did not rank as one of the top 20 most segregated states for Latino students
using either of these two measures of segregation (see appendix);34 however, in 2016, Louisiana
ranked 18 for the most segregated state for Latino students in intensely segregated schools and
20 for the typical Latino student’s exposure to white students. This may represent Latino
students increasingly being in schools with black students who have fairly high segregation.
Encouragingly, although Rhode Island has one of the lower percentages of white students that
the typical Latino student is exposed to in 2016—despite a high percentage of white students—
the Latino student exposure to white student has actually increased by 0.3 percentage points
since 2011 (see appendix). North Carolina, which in 2011 had been ranked 19 for Latino
students in intensely segregated schools and 20 for the typical Latino student’s exposure to white
students, is no longer among the top 20 most segregated states for Latino students. Similarly,
Washington, which had been ranked 17 for the share of Latino students in intensely segregated
schools in 2011, is no longer among the top 20 most segregated states for Latino students in 2016
(see Appendix).
In 2016, many of the states in which black students had the lowest exposure to white students
also had similar patterns for Latino students. Some of these states include California, New York,
Texas, New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois. These patterns are particularly concerning in states
like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois where white students account for a substantial share
(more than 44%) of the state’s student enrollment.
34
Orfield, G., Frankenberg, E., Ee, J., & Kucsera, J. (2014). Brown at 60: Great progress, a long retreat and an
uncertain future. Los Angeles: Civil Rights Project/ Proyecto Derechos Civiles.
Table 9: Lowest Latino Student Exposure to White Students by State, 2016-17
Latino Exposure to White Students State Percentage of White Students
2 Texas 17.3 28.2
3 New Mexico 19.9 23.4
4 New York 20.4 44.5
6 Nevada 24.0 33.2
8 Arizona 25.1 39.0
10 Florida 26.6 38.9
12 Georgia 31.2 40.3
13 Massachusetts 33.0 61.3
15 Oklahoma 36.0 49.4
16 Virginia 36.4 49.7
17 Colorado 36.9 54.0
18 Delaware 38.0 44.9
Note: The calculations for this state table do not include Hawaii, Alaska, or any other state with less than 5% Latino. District of
Columbia was not counted as a state, but the district had the highest segregation rates across all indicators.
Table 10: Highest Percentages of Latino Students in 90-100% Non-white Schools by State,
2016-17
% of Latino Students in 90-100%
State % of Latino Students
Non-White Schools
2 New York 55.4 26.4
3 Texas 54.3 52.3
7 Arizona 41.3 45.0
9 New Mexico 35.1 61.4
10 Florida 33.5 32.6
11 Nevada 32.0 42.1
13 Georgia 30.8 15.2
14 Massachusetts 29.1 19.2
15 Colorado 17.2 33.2
17 North Carolina 16.3 16.9
19 Michigan 15.5 7.7
Note: The calculations for this state table do not include Hawaii, Alaska, or any other state with less than 5% Latino.
District of Columbia was not counted as a state, but the district had the highest segregation rates across all indicators.
White Student Segregation
In some of the argument submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court about the harms of segregation in
Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights lawyers noted that segregation harmed both black
students who were segregated—but also white students as well. Subsequent integration efforts,
such as those currently being undertaken even voluntarily by districts around the country,35 as
well as universities’ diversity efforts are informed by evidence demonstrating the harms to white
children who attend segregated schools.
Such integration is especially important in our changed demographic context. For the first time
in our analysis of segregation trends, white students no longer account for the majority of
students in our nation’s public school enrollment. In 2016, white students comprised 48.4% of
our country’s public school students, a decline of eight percentage points from 2006 (Figure 5).
As would be expected given this demographic change, their isolation (e.g., exposure to other
white students) has also declined during this time period (seven percentage points). While white
students are becoming less segregated with same-race peers, they continue to attend schools in
which nearly seven out of 10 of their classmates are also white, which represents a much higher
percentage than their overall share of the enrollment. Recall, if there was perfect integration, the
exposure of the typical white student to other white students would mirror their share of the
enrollment.
For the last decade, the second largest percentage of students that white students are exposed to
are Latinos, which in 2016 was 13.7% on average. This increased exposure to Latino students of
four percentage points, however, is not quite as large as their overall increase in share of the
enrollment (approximately six percentage points; see Figure 1). In 2016, the typical white
student attended a school in which 8.1% of their peers were black and 4.2% were Asian.
35
Anderson, J. & Frankenberg, E. (2019). Voluntary integration in uncertain times. Phi Delta Kappan, 100(5), 14-
18.
Figure 5: Racial Composition of Schools Attended by the Typical White Student, 2006, 2011,
2016
100
3.7 2.6 3.9
3.9 4.2
90 9.7
11.8
13.7
80 8.8
8.3
8.1
70
60
50
40
76.7
72.5 69.3
30
20
10
0
2006 2011 2016
White Black Latino Asian Multiracial
Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2016-17, 2011-12, and 2006-07.
Note: The shares of white enrollment for 2006, 2011, and 2016 were 56.7%, 52%, and 48.4% respectively. Total percentages
do not add up to 100 percent due to the exclusion of American Indian students.
A consistent finding across geography is that white students are isolated to a substantial extent
(Table 11). In central cities of large metropolitan areas, the typical white student attends a school
that is 45% white, which is much higher than students of any other race/ethnicity in such schools.
The typical black and Latino students, for example, are in schools that are 12% white, on
average.
In every other type of geographical area, white students attend majority white schools, on
average; in suburban areas they are at least two-thirds white and in non-metropolitan areas,
greater than three-quarters white. Black and Latino student exposure to whites, by contrast, is not
higher than 50% anywhere. Even in rural areas where 70% of students are white—the region
with the highest percentage of white students— the typical white student attended an 80% white
school while the typical black or Latino student in rural areas attended a school that was 43%
white, on average. In suburban areas—particularly in midsize and small metros—black student
exposure to white students is considerably higher than Latino-white exposure. Suburban black
students have substantially higher exposure to white students than their same-race central city
peers in each sized metro, while the gap for Latino students’ exposure to white students is less
between city and suburb.
In some areas, such as midsized suburban areas and rural schools, Asian students have exposure
to a majority of white students, on average. In all types of schools, Asian students’ exposure to
white students is higher than that of Latino students, and in many but not all, it is also higher
than black-white student exposure.
Table 11: Exposure to White Students by the Typical Race of Each Student & Types of Areas: 2016-17
By the Typical…
% White Students
White Black Latino Asian
Enrolled
Student Student Student Student
Large Metro
Central City 45 11.7 12.2 21.9 20.3
Suburb 66 27.2 25.6 40.8 46.9
Midsize Metro
Central City 51.3 19.3 21.4 35.2 32.2
Suburb 70.3 44.4 36.8 51.2 59
Small Metro
Central City 60.2 30.9 29.5 38 45.3
Suburb 74.2 49.2 36.5 47.9 62.8
Town 76.0 38.6 37.4 49.2 63.1
Rural 80.4 42.8 43.3 55.1 70.0
SUMMARY
School integration has been a central issue in civil rights policy and law for two-thirds of a
century because the public schools are our most important and universal public institution.
Americans and political leaders strongly believe that schools are the keys to opportunity. The
Brown decision found that the mandatory segregation of schools in seventeen states was a
fundamental violation of the United States Constitution and held that there was a constitutional
responsibility to provide “equal protection” to groups of students who had been denied since
separate schools were “inherently unequal’ and did irreversible harm to students who attended
them. After decisive breakthroughs in the l960s and early l970s as a result of coordinated legal
and political action and implemented as a result of challenges by many African-American
community leaders and educators in the South, there have been few national initiatives to foster
successful integration. By the 1990s the courts were ending desegregation plans and segregation
began to creep up year after year after year. Since the early 1980s, few federal funds were
available to support voluntary integration and even those voluntary local efforts were
undermined by the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2007 Parents Involved case.
Looking at this history and seeing segregation spreading into more sectors of suburbia, many
concluded that the effort had failed. But the best evidence showed in increasingly more
sophisticated and powerful research that segregation has devastating effects that generations of
reforms have failed to counter. Research also shows that desegregation has clear benefits for
students’ lives and there are ways to structure integrated schools to make those effects stronger.
The question for educators, civil rights groups, and policy makers is: what can we do to use
current methods—most of which are basically methods of school choice—to achieve more of
those benefits? In a nation that is reaching an unprecedented level of diversity and where there
are huge racial gaps and dangerously polarized conditions, can we use school integration to bring
young people together across lines of division and prepare all groups better for living and
working as adults in a society with no racial/ethnic majority?
There are signs of revived interest. After the midterm elections, the House of Representatives
recently heard bipartisan testimony affirming the promise of Brown but very different ideas
about what achieving Brown meant in the 21st century. When Congress acted strongly in the 20th
century, passing the l964 Civil Rights Act and providing substantial money to help interested
communities take positive steps, it made a big impact to helping to enforce Brown. Civil rights
leaders have little hope for leadership on these issues from the U.S. Supreme Court as presently
constituted and have turned their attention to the state courts. The federal Constitution says
nothing about education but state constitutions do and some directly address segregation issues.
Statewide legal struggles now going on in Connecticut, Minnesota, and New Jersey may produce
important new initiatives. Some communities are beginning to see gentrification as a possible
way to help revive urban school districts if the communities can provide academically
challenging schools with strong plans to assure diversity and equity, serving both existing
residents and the young professional newcomers. In other areas of metropolitan areas, racially
changing suburbs, there are also important opportunities to limit the spread of segregation.
One of the great resources we have for our future is the well-documented and extensively studied
experience of desegregation in the civil rights era, much of which involved bringing black and
white students together in situations of intense controversy often in formerly all-white schools
with all-white faculties. Though desegregation too often placed a heavier burden on black
students and came at considerable cost to black communities in many districts, in spite of those
conditions, there were usually significant gains for all students, and the attitudes of Southern
whites became a good deal more favorable. In some communities, school desegregation
coincided with lower housing segregation.36 We have learned about many of the conditions and
techniques needed to produce the most favorable outcomes in diverse schools. We have
compelling evidence from desegregated schools that white students are not harmed in terms of
measured achievement outcomes and gain considerably in terms of their readiness to live and
work across racial lines in the setting of the future. From 1972 to 1981 there was a major federal
effort to offer resources to communities wishing to work on successful integration, the only
period in which there was substantial funding for research on desegregation. The program was
widely sought by scores of school districts knowing they needed help. Many desired funds to
create magnet schools that managed to voluntarily integrate millions of students when their civil
rights policies were followed. Such funding today could be extremely helpful in understanding
our new and more complex multiracial schools.
We also see social movements arising in many areas demonstrating a commitment to integration.
In dozens of districts around the country, we see educators, community leaders, parents, and/or
students leading the way to talk about why segregation is harmful and pressing districts and
schools to do more to address segregation and inequality.37 Many educators and community
leaders, particularly in more diverse areas of the country, went to desegregated schools
36
Siegel-Hawley, G. (2016). When the fences come down: Twenty-first century lessons from metropolitan school
desegregation. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
37
See for example, student groups like Integrate NYC; and parent groups like Integrated Schools.
themselves as students and can speak to the importance of such schools.38 We need more such
educators and community leaders to talk about why segregation is a problem to achieving a
range of educational goals and the benefits of diverse schools for all students—and the
importance of maintaining political will to address segregation.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Experience has shown that segregation left to itself tends to mutate and persist especially if
leadership stirs up fears and stereotypes. It is clear that desegregation and lasting diversity
seldom happen by accident and that they need plans and support to remain stably diverse among
students and faculties. It is also clear that rising residential segregation, which has been going on
in our cities for a century and is spreading to the suburbs, feeds off fear and stereotypes.
Segregation can only be countered by information and successful plans involving more than the
school districts, including housing, transportation, and other local and regional government
agencies and private partners. The choice we face now is about what kind of communities and
society we want to have.
Our surveys in a number of school districts have shown widespread student support and
appreciation of diverse education, which often surprises parent groups and policy makers. School
district surveys could show how students value their own interracial schooling experiences and
how they could better move plans forward.
We urgently need a way to better measure economic segregation and its connection to racial
segregation in our nation’s schools based on our earlier findings of the overlapping segregation
in public schools and findings that black and Latino residents are more likely to live in
neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. While the Community Eligibility Provision provides a
way to help schools ensure students receive food, scholars and governmental officials must
collaboratively work together to solve this problem, which has been long related to educational
opportunity.
School desegregation involves creating and supporting diverse educational institutions inside
polarized communities. The key actors need to understand the consequences of doing nothing,
the evidence on the benefits of integration, and the logic of the plans for better outcomes. A first
step is better training for school and community staff to understand and respect newcomer
groups and to get training in techniques that produce positive outcomes in diverse settings.
School faculties, leaders, and staffs need training in responding to growing racial, economic, and
linguistic diversity. School staffs need training in handling three-way diversity. In many
communities that historically had one major nonwhite group, there are now two or more, each
with their own history and culture. In order to welcome students from diverse backgrounds into
integrated schools, universities must play a major role in assisting schools as well as ensuring
that teacher and educational leadership preparation programs graduate educators and
38
Examples include former U.S. Secretary of Education John King, NYC Chancellor Richard Carranza, or parents
of children like Rep Joe Courtney from Connecticut. Likewise, in defending Jefferson County’s voluntary
integration plan, district leaders cited their experience overcoming segregation and resistance to desegregation as
well as the benefits they have seen for all children and their community as reasons to implement such policies.
school/district leaders who have studied the many dimensions of how schools and districts
should be structured. This includes hiring staff and faculty from diverse backgrounds, ideally
multilingual, and utilizing curriculum that respects the culture and historical struggles of all
racial/ethnic groups. Strong affirmative action plans for faculty, administrative, and staff
diversity are keys to successful interracial schools and positive relationships with diverse groups
in the community. Once hired, districts need to make sure to retain diverse faculty and staff, and
provide them with training to successfully welcome and teach in interracial classrooms and
schools. Schools could have cooperative teacher exchanges across districts within metropolitan
areas as one part of on-going professional development. Properly done, these approaches can
make schools more effective and stable and give faculty tools that actually work.
Racial change and resegregation are not limited to individual neighborhoods and communities.
Supporting regional approaches to desegregation is essential and would mirror the provision of
other governmental services in metropolitan areas. Such efforts need to include housing but also
need to think about how to facilitate student movement across district boundary lines to facilitate
integration. These regional approaches are increasingly essential given the findings of incredible
diversity and segregation in our suburban schools. Too often addressing segregation has been
considered as a central city issue, and we need to provide supports for suburban districts—that
themselves vary widely—to adopt plans and policies to effectively respond to growing
diversity.39 There should be federal and state funding and university sponsorship for the creation
of integrated metropolitan-wide magnet schools that provide distinctive opportunities for regions
and even states. States could play an important role in regional educational equity approaches,
including incentivizing interdistrict cooperation.40 This regionalism would be additive. It would
not end local districts but it would expand the options for students in many districts and would
help train leaders who could make our extremely diverse future more successful.
While much attention needs to be paid to segregation and inequality across district lines, more
can be done within districts as well to address segregation. An analysis of the ending of school
desegregation cases in the South found that it contributed to the resegregation for black students
in the region.41 As the vast majority of desegregation cases are those within district, this suggests
that new district assignment policies may have contributed to rising segregation. This may also
be true in other areas as well where the diverse population leads to different school contexts and
perceptions of uneven school quality that makes assignment efforts contentious and can lead
away from integration even if that was not the original intent.42 Leaders of all schools, regardless
39
See generally Frankenberg, E., & Orfield, G. (2012). Resegregation of suburban schools: A hidden crisis in
American education. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.
40
Finnigan, K.S. and J.J. Holme. 2015. Regional educational equity policies: Learning from inter-district
integration programs. The National Coalition on School Diversity.
41
Reardon, S. F., Grewal, E. T., Kalogrides, D., & Greenberg, E. (2012). Brown fades: The end of court-ordered
school desegregation and the resegregation of American public schools. Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management, 31(4), 876-904.
42
Siegel-Hawley, G. 2013. Educational gerrymandering? Race and attendance boundaries in a demographically
changing suburb. Harvard Educational Review 83:580-662; Siegel-Hawley, G., Diem, S. & Frankenberg, E. (2018).
The disintegration of Memphis-Shelby County: School district secession and local control in the 21st century.
American Educational Research Journal, 55(4), 651-692; Eaton, S. 2012. Not your father’s suburb: Race and
rectitude in a changing Minnesota community. One Nation Indivisible. Currently there is an on-going debate about
redrawing school boundaries in Montgomery County, Maryland among other places. See
of whether district, charter, or private, should consider how their schools contribute to patterns of
segregation reported here.
School choice plans without equity policies and strategies often end up with the best-educated
and connected families getting the best choices, actually increasing inequality. All school choice
programs need voluntary goals, policies, and practices that foster diversity and integration.43
Contemporary integration plans, unlike those of fifty years ago, almost always involve some type
of school choice. How school choice—that is receiving public funds (charter schools, private
schools receiving public funding)—is designed matters as to whether it will help further
integration, not exacerbate segregation. Particularly in larger districts or inter-district choice, the
provision of transportation is essential for choice to be a reality for many families, not just
available to those who can transport their child to their desired school. Good magnet plans need
resources and staffing to assure that a genuinely distinctive opportunity has been created. Sharing
of knowledge about available options, including looking beyond accountability scores, could
help families make more integrative choices. State or federal funding for magnet schools that
aim to decouple school composition from housing segregation trends should be expanded, and
universities could play a role by sponsoring the creation of metropolitan-wide magnet schools—
that could help to prepare their future college students in diverse settings.
The federal government and a number of states have underwritten and actively supported
expansion of charter schools without plans or accountability for serving all groups of students
and bringing together students in a positive cross-racial context.44 Charters should be required to
have the same equity measures as other public schools, particularly cognizant of how schools of
choice can further segregation without civil rights provisions. Magnet schools should be able to
compete for charter funding on an equitable basis.
School integration efforts should include dual language immersion programs, now being actively
developed, for instance, in North Carolina or San Antonio, Texas. Such programs are often seen
as very desirable by white parents; integration is a natural byproduct when also including native
language speakers. Further, by providing equal status for English and other language speakers,
the structure of such schools aligns with Gordon Allport’s theory about how to best set up
intergroup contact.45 Ensuring within-school equity in such schools is essential.
https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/schools/students-countywide-boundary-study-could-change-the-
course-of-history/
43
See generally Orfield, G., & Frankenberg, E. (2013). Educational delusions? Why choice can deepen inequality
and how to make it fair. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
44
For more on charter schools, magnet schools, and segregation see: U.S. Government Accountability Office.
(2016). K–12 education: Better use of information could help agencies identify disparities and address racial
discrimination. Washington, DC. Retrieved from https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-345; Flaxman, G.,
Kucsera, J., Orfield, G., Ayscue, J., & Siegel-Hawley, G. (2013 October). A status quo of segregation: Racial and
economic imbalance in New Jersey Schools, 1989-2010. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto
Derechos Civiles; Ayscue, J. B., Levy, R., Siegel-Hawley, G., & Woodward, B. (2017 June). Choices worth making:
Creating, sustaining and expanding diverse magnet schools. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto
Derechos Civiles; Frankenberg, E., Siegel-Hawley, G., & Orfield, G. (2008 November). The forgotten choice?
Rethinking magnet schools in a changing landscape. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos
Civiles; Siegel-Hawley, G., & Frankenberg, E. (2012 February). Reviving magnet schools: Strengthening a
successful choice option. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles.
45
Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
State officials need to firmly oppose breaking up school districts in ways that intensify
segregation and create white enclaves. One of the reasons the South had the highest levels of
school desegregation was the existence or creation of countywide districts in many parts of the
South. Metropolitan areas in other regions of the country with higher district fragmentation (e.g.,
smaller districts) were more segregated. Because there is little student assignment across district
boundary lines, the creation of new districts engrains patterns of school segregation in ways that
are very difficult to undo. State secession laws vary widely, and state officials should consider
how to provide for a process that considers the effect of a proposed secession on segregation and
educational opportunity for all students, both within the community seceding as well as the
larger district the community is seeking to leave.46 More broadly, state departments of education
now play very central roles under the ESSA law and need to create expertise on desegregation
and race relations training. Many districts experiencing rapid racial change need their support.
Fair housing policies and urban planning must be metropolitan in scope and locating subsidized
housing in decent school areas is critical. Again, there are models of the work being done in
some communities that local communities can build on.47 Implementing the Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing rule, and partnering housing and school integration efforts are essential.
Private foundations and community groups have funded many educational efforts but almost
always within the context of segregation, which often undermines the success of their efforts. It
would be invaluable if they offered support to help develop and implement local diversity plans
and programs through research, advocacy, and litigation when needed.
46
For more discussion and recommendations, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2018/05/02/back-to-the-future-a-new-school-district-secession-movement-is-gaining-
steam/?utm_term=.b6126c9d9193
47
PRRAC. (2019). Housing and schools: The importance of engagement for educators and education advocates.
Washington, DC: Author.
APPENDIX: Comparative Tables from Brown at 6048
Most Segregated States for Black Students, 2011-12

% Black in Majority White % Black in 90-100% Minority Black Exposure to White
Schools Schools Students
1 California 8.0% New York 64.6% New York 3.7%
2 Texas 13.1% Illinois 61.3% Illinois 16.7%
3 New York 13.3% Maryland 53.1% California 17.9%
4 Maryland 14.0% Michigan 50.4% Maryland 18.1%
5 Nevada 14.6% New Jersey 48.5% Texas 19.5%
6 Illinois 14.8% Pennsylvania 46.0% New Jersey 21.8%
7 Connecticut 18.5% Mississippi 45.3% Georgia 23.8%
8 Georgia 19.5% California 45.3% Mississippi 24.7%
9 New Jersey 20.8% Tennessee 44.8% Michigan 25.6%
10 Florida 20.9% Wisconsin 43.4% Nevada 26.3%
11 Mississippi 22.9% Texas 42.7% Florida 27.1%
12 Michigan 25.1% Georgia 42.0% Tennessee 27.7%
13 Tennessee 25.3% Alabama 41.8% Connecticut 28.2%
14 North Carolina 26.6% Missouri 40.8% Pennsylvania 29.2%
15 Indiana 28.0% Ohio 37.1% Wisconsin 29.3%
16 Ohio 28.1% Florida 34.0% Alabama 30.1%
17 Pennsylvania 28.1% Connecticut 29.8% Ohio 30.3%
18 Wisconsin 28.2% Louisiana 29.6% Louisiana 30.6%
19 Louisiana 28.6% Indiana 27.4% Missouri 31.2%
20 Virginia 28.9% Arkansas 26.8% Indiana 32.8%
Note: The calculations for this state table do not include Hawaii, Alaska, or any other state with less than 5% black. District of
Columbia was not counted as a state, but the district had the highest segregation rates across all three indicators.
Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data, 2011-12.
48
The full Brown at 60 report is available at: https://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-
and-diversity/brown-at-60-great-progress-a-long-retreat-and-an-uncertain-future/Brown-at-60-051814.pdf
Most Integrated States for Black Students, 2011-12
% Black in Majority White % Black in 90-100% Minority Black Exposure to White
1 West Virginia 92.6% West Virginia 0.0% West Virginia 76.9%
2 Iowa 67.7% Kentucky 2.4% Iowa 59.7%
3 Kentucky 61.1% Iowa 2.4% Kentucky 55.5%
4 Minnesota 47.2% Kansas 7.8% Kansas 44.4%
5 Kansas 42.7% Nebraska 11.8% Minnesota 44.2%
7 Nebraska 36.6% Delaware 13.4% Nebraska 42.3%
8 Delaware 35.9% Oklahoma 14.5% Delaware 40.1%
9 Missouri 34.4% Virginia 16.7% South Carolina 37.3%
10 South Carolina 33.5% Minnesota 17.2% Oklahoma 37.2%
11 Arizona 32.3% South Carolina 18.2% Massachusetts 35.8%
12 Alabama 31.5% North Carolina 19.6% Arizona 35.8%
13 Rhode Island 31.4% Nevada 19.7% Rhode Island 35.3%
14 Massachusetts 30.8% Arizona 20.8% Virginia 35.2%
15 Oklahoma 30.4% Rhode Island 24.2% North Carolina 34.1%
16 Arkansas 29.7% Massachusetts 25.4% Arkansas 33.9%
17 Virginia 28.9% Arkansas 26.8% Indiana 33.4%
18 Louisiana 28.6% Indiana 27.4% Missouri 32.8%
19 Wisconsin 28.2% Louisiana 29.6% Louisiana 31.2%
20 Pennsylvania 28.1% Connecticut 29.8% Ohio 30.6%
Note: The calculations for this state table do not include Hawaii or Alaska. States with fewer than 5% blacks are omitted.
Most Segregated States for Latino Students, 2011-12
% Latino in Majority White % Latino in 90-100% Minority Latino Exposure to White
1 New Mexico 6.0% New York 56.7% California 15.9%
2 California 7.8% California 55.4% Texas 18.0%
3 Texas 11.0% Texas 53.5% New York 20.5%
4 New York 16.5% Illinois 45.9% New Mexico 21.2%
5 Nevada 17.2% New Jersey 42.8% Illinois 26.0%
6 Maryland 21.3% Rhode Island 39.8% New Jersey 26.4%
7 Arizona 21.4% Arizona 39.4% Arizona 26.6%
8 New Jersey 22.3% Maryland 37.9% Nevada 26.7%
9 Florida 22.7% New Mexico 34.5% Maryland 27.1%
10 Illinois 22.9% Florida 30.1% Rhode Island 28.0%
11 Rhode Island 23.6% Pennsylvania 29.5% Florida 29.0%
12 Connecticut 25.8% Massachusetts 29.2% Georgia 34.6%
13 Massachusetts 30.9% Georgia 27.7% Connecticut 35.1%
14 Georgia 31.3% Nevada 22.7% Massachusetts 35.1%
15 Delaware 33.7% Connecticut 21.7% Colorado 38.2%
16 Virginia 35.3% Colorado 18.4% Pennsylvania 39.2%
17 Colorado 36.0% Washington 14.6% Oklahoma 39.9%
18 Oklahoma 37.4% Wisconsin 13.8% Delaware 40.2%
19 Pennsylvania 39.4% North Carolina 13.5% Virginia 40.3%
20 North Carolina 40.7% Michigan 12.7% North Carolina 42.6%
Note: The calculations for this state table do not include Hawaii, Alaska, or any other state with less than 5% Latino population.
District of Columbia was not counted as a state, but the district had the highest segregated rates across all three indicators.
Most Integrated States for Latino Students, 2011-12
% Latino in Majority White % Latino in 90-100% Minority Latino Exposure to White
1 Wyoming 97.4% Idaho 0.1% Wyoming 74.7%
2 Idaho 84.1% Wyoming 0.2% Idaho 66.6%
3 Iowa 66.9% Utah 0.6% Iowa 61.5%
4 Utah 65.6% Oregon 1.3% Utah 60.4%
5 Minnesota 64.1% Iowa 2.1% Minnesota 56.6%
6 Michigan 58.2% South Carolina 4.6% Michigan 54.7%
7 Wisconsin 57.0% Arkansas 5.3% Oregon 52.5%
8 Indiana 56.2% Delaware 7.6% Wisconsin 52.4%
9 Oregon 56.0% Minnesota 7.8% Indiana 52.2%
10 Arkansas 55.1% Virginia 7.9% Arkansas 51.1%
11 South Carolina 50.4% Nebraska 8.0% Tennessee 51.0%
12 Tennessee 50.3% Oklahoma 8.5% South Carolina 49.0%
13 Nebraska 45.0% Kansas 9.2% Nebraska 46.4%
14 Washington 44.9% Tennessee 10.4% Kansas 43.9%
15 Kansas 41.7% Indiana 11.0% Washington 43.3%
16 North Carolina 40.7% Michigan 12.7% North Carolina 42.6%
17 Pennsylvania 39.4% North Carolina 13.5% Virginia 40.3%
18 Oklahoma 37.4% Wisconsin 13.8% Delaware 40.2%
19 Colorado 36.0% Washington 14.6% Oklahoma 39.9%
20 Virginia 35.3% Colorado 18.4% Pennsylvania 39.2%
Note: The calculations for this state table do not include Hawaii or Alaska. States must have at least 5% of students who are
Latino to be included.
TECHNICAL NOTES
1. This report uses multiple years’ Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey
Data of the Common Core of Data (CCD), National Center for Education Statistics. Of
all schools in the CCD data, this report focuses on regular schools that are open and are
being operated in the survey administration year.49 This report’s analysis does not include
schools in U.S. territories, such as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana
Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
2. This report’s definition of the regions is as follows:

• South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia;
• Border: Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma,
and West Virginia;
• Northeast: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont;
• Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North
Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin;
• West: Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah,
Washington, and Wyoming.
3. Segregation Statistics (Exposure Rates) This report uses exposure statistics to measure
segregation and to capture student experiences of segregation. Exposure of certain racial
groups to one another or to majority groups shows the distribution of racial groups among
organizational units and describes the average contact between different groups. It is
calculated by employing the percentage of a particular group of students of interest in a
small unit (e.g., school) with a certain group of students in a larger geographic or
organizational unit (e.g., state or district) to show a weighted average of the composition
of a particular racial group. The formula for calculating the exposure rates of a student in
racial group A to students in racial group B is:
where
n is the number of small units (e.g., school) in a larger unit (e.g., state or district)
ai is the number of students in racial group A in the small unit i (school i)
A is the total number of students in racial group A in the larger unit (state or district)
bi is the number of students in racial group B in the small unit i (school i)
ti is the total number of students in all racial groups in the small unit i (school i)
49
Schools counts for 2006, 2011, and 2016 datasets examined in this report are 88,273, 88,673, and 89,656,
respectively.

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Harming Our Common Future: America's Segregated Schools 65 Years After Brown

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Harming our Common Future:

America's Segregated Schools 65 Years after Brown

May 10, 2019

Current Barriers to Further Integration

CHANGES IN PUBLIC SCHOOL ENROLLMENT

Further, more than half of students of color identify as Latino—representing a dramatic

Figure 1: Percentage of Student Population in Public Schools, by Race, 1970 to 2016-17

Figure 3: Percentage of Intensely Segregated Schools, 1988-2016

Source: NCES CCD, Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Black Student Segregation

Table 6: Lowest Black Student Exposure to White Students by State: 2016-17

Latino Student Segregation

White Student Segregation

White Black Latino Asian Multiracial

Most Segregated States for Black Students, 2011-12

2. This report’s definition of the regions is as follows:

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